I'm actively looking for reasons to be cheerful, and it's high time I mentioned something that's been delighting me for the past few weeks. I'm referring to the Royal Mail's "partner for growth" campaign aimed at business users of its services.

The initial attraction was a charming animated advert that has been running on TV and on the web. Joy of joys it incorporates a print-themed section involving what appears to be a Heidelberg cylinder. Though having donned my anorak and studied the advert numerous times it appears to say "Leiberg" on said machine, which is something of an injustice to one of our industry's most iconic bits of kit. You can see the advert here.

Anyhow, detail quibbles aside, the advert directs us to the Royal Mail website and this is where it gets really clever. Punters fill in a short online questionnaire about their company, their aspirations, and the sort of mailings and customer communications they do. Shortly afterwards a personalised PDF of your very own tailored growth pack pops up in the email, with a commitment that a printed version will be in your hands within a week.

The printed pack duly turns up in a jaunty envelope, and is an interesting single piece 12pp A4 concertina fold format. Personalised throughout, natch, with tips and case studies relevant to the info entered in the aforementioned questionnaire. I guess St Ives could be producing the packs on the HP Indigo w3200 it has in Leeds, and my next challenge is to find out what technology is being used to pull it all together. Respondents are further prompted into action by follow-up emails.  

All in all it's a nice example of the sort of integrated campaign that combines the strengths of both digital and print media. The promo is set to run for a year and more than 6,000 packs have been requested thus far, and an accompanying direct mail campaign is also planned.

If they could just fix the "Leiberg" thing, it would be perfect...